Architect

Architecture

Colonial Architecture reveals the progressive involvement of the British in India spanning about 400 years. Military engineers provided the first secure compounds for the East India Company’s trading posts in Madras 1639, Bombay 1668, and Calcutta 1690. As colonial influence spread so did the architecture. Edward Lutyen’s 1912 New Delhi grand plan used ideas from the Garden City movement, and laid the seeds for modern Indian city planning, and is seen as the best Raj architectural legacy.

Architectural quality varies. Early buildings in fortified encampments borrowed from the military, using crenellated decoration to adorn parapets. Prominent buildings in key locations were built expressing power, this came not just from the dominance of the British but from their stylistic choice of Neo-Classicism to represent their cultural authority. More numerous were the modest cottages and bungalows that borrowed stylistically from Bengali ‘bangla’ village huts. Aside to this was Church architecture which differed by following the prevailing English trend - from the clean lines of Christopher Wren’s English Renaissance churches to the verticality of Pugin’s Victorian Neo-Gothic piles to represent pure Christian values.

Unlike French or Portuguese Colonialists, whose architecture was accustomed to Mediterranean needs, British designs rapidly altered adding arcades and deep verandahs to deal with the needs to shelter from sun and monsoon. Italianate designs often better suited the climatic needs, compared to pattern book English designs.

Against the dominant style of the Aesthetic Imperialists (represented by the Public Works Department) there were the Native Revivalist architects that thought civic architecture should represent the people, something with a connection to the land and the past, which in later Victorian times was mirrored by William Morris’ view - of returning to an architecture using craftsmanship and traditional methods. Many of the later universities and law courts used this Indo-Saracenic architecture (a mixture of Hindu, Islamic and Western elements). James Fergusson a Morris supporter, argued that copying Indian styles to be a crime, and backed the expressive use of Indian forms in architectural expression.

People

• Henry Irwin Architect in India 1841–1922 by Chris Higman
• Edwin Lutyens 1869-1944 Wikipedia - - British Architect notable for the planning of New Delhi

Other external links

• Indian Architecture This is an excellent Indian site reviewing architects and architectural style, including Colonial Architecture.
• Deccan Queen: A Spatial Analysis of Poona in the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries by Wayne Thomas Mullen. Sydney University Digital Theses 26-Mar-2006. A thesis which is “structured around the analysis of a model that describes the Cantonment, the Civil Lines, the Sadr Bazar and part of the Native City of the Western Indian settlement of Poona in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.” Contains sections on architecture
• Victorian and Edwardian Architecture in British India from The Victorian Web
• Heritage Buildings & Monuments Photographs from Skyscrapercity.com